Faster loading on ROM or SD card?

[ppc_md2b]

Hi There,

Just switched from Palm to PPC by buying an HP4700, and I'm having a bit of an issue with installing applications. Most of my apps are third-party medical software, usually with large databases. I first tried installing to the FileStore, but found that the app loads relatively slowly (a few seconds at least). I then tried installing the same app to the SD card, and it loaded faster, but still slower than on my old T3, which was a bit surprising. Both the FileStore and the SD are completely empty, and I still have about 25 MB left in the main RAM. What configuration (FileStore, SD, program vs. storage RAM) do you guys find gives you the fastest loading of your apps?

Many thanks,

Jonathan

[surur]

Main memory is fastest. After that the difference is between the speed of your SD vs the built-in storage. It should be easy to test. Just copy a large file from BIS or SD to main memory and time the transfer. You get SD cards that are a lot faster than BIS these days.

Surur

[ppc_md2b]

Hey Surur,

Thanks for the quick reply! I certainly notice that my SD card is faster than BIS. The next question is, of course, what to do with those 80 MB of BIS? Given my PDA needs, I originally intended to put programs on the BIS and pack the SD with endless documents, lecture notes, journal articles, etc. Now maybe I should do the opposite?

Thanks again.

Jonathan

[surur]

I just ran a little test. I copied the Adobe Acrobat directory (7.8MB) from my Looxstore to main memory. This took 15.4 seconds.

I then copied it from the Looxstore to SD card. This took 32 seconds (due to multiple pauses)

I then copied it from the SD card to main memory. This took 13.2 seconds (256 Mb card with no special speed rating)

Finally I copied it from one directory in main memory to another in main memory. This was 12.5 seconds.

All done using resco at 400Mhz.

BIS is certainly the slowest, even without using a fast SD card. I wonder what the test would produce with a 80x SD card. Could a fast SD card be even faster than main memory?

Surur

[ppc_md2b]

Hi Surur,

That's a neat experiment you performed. Maybe I'm too impatient (or naive), but I was somewhat disappointed with the speed of this apparently "fast" PDA. That being said, I'm blown away by the screen quality and really like the layout of my apps and documents. The speed isn't bad per se, it's just that my expectations were quite high. I'm going to try moving some more stuff around and see how things turn out.

Regards,

Jonathan

[ppc_md2b]

Surur,

Just a quick note - I was using an ATP 1.0 GB card. The speed is 60x.

JG